Read Book

Chapter 6: Paths Are Different, the Goal One

I’m feeling anxious about leaving(feeling I’m just beginning to work on myself(and with the relationship going deep, and now leaving(.

Mm mm(just relax and don’t become anxious about it because anxiety disturbs everything. It doesn’t help in any way; it creates only more and more hindrances. If you love and anxiety comes in, it creates a distance and then the relationship becomes a burden. If you meditate and anxiety comes in, then meditation becomes impossible.

Whatsoever you do, do it without anxiety. Anxiety is just a habit. Try to find out why it arises. It is not because of a certain situation; it is just an old habit. If you want to perform something, to show something, if you worry about what others are going to think, then anxiety arises. It is part of the ego, part of self-consciousness. If you are unselfconscious, anxiety is impossible. It is just a shadow.

For example, you go on talking and you talk beautifully. Then suddenly you are on the stage and you have to talk to a thousand people, and then the anxiety arises. You have been talking your whole life, and the same is to be done; you are not going to do anything new! And it has never been a problem. You may have talked to each of these thousand people separately. But why does anxiety suddenly arise?

Now, facing a thousand people, you suddenly feel you are being judged; you feel that they will form an opinion about you - how you act, how you speak, how you perform. Once the idea of performance enters then the natural flow is lost and anxiety arises. So whenever you feel it coming, just seek deep down and you will find it is a self-consciousness - whether it is a relationship, or work on oneself, or anything else.

And there is no need for the anxiety because there is nobody who can judge you; nobody has the authority to judge anybody and you need not depend on anybody’s opinion. In fact this should be the criterion of inner growth. If you can be happy absolutely alone, and you don’t need others to make you happy; if you can be flowing, silent, beautiful, alone, and you don’t need others to make you whatsoever you think you are; if others are not needed to prop you, or for any sort of approval, then you are grown-up. Only children ask for others’ approval - what daddy thinks, what mum thinks. When you are grown-up you are on your own; you need not bother what others think.

So drop all anxieties. And they can only be dropped if you accept that you are whatsoever you are. You are not expected to be anybody else and you cannot be. So simply be yourself and relax, and don’t ask for anybody’s approval, anybody’s opinion - and then suddenly there is no anxiety.